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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Justice, Like Truth, is Relative to the Observer

A patient
dies at the OT table. The doctors did what they could do. The head surgeon was
good to follow the rules by the book while he carried out the surgery. He has
no regrets. He did a good job. Other doctors agree. The operation was done
"by the book". But… the
patients is dead. And the relatives are furious. They want an answer
from the doctors.. They hate the doctors. But it doesn't matter… The doctor is
right in his place. And the relatives are in theirs.. But the patient is dead.

Such is
the case of NEET.. The lawyers, judges and the whole legal system did a good
job. They did what they could do best.. Dramatic arguments. Flowery,
nonsensical jargon. "Inevitable" delays. The judgement was long, but,
sound and constitutional. Its just that the NEET was the patient, and we are
the relatives..

I
scurried through the long tedious judgement given by the "Honourable"
judges.. All I could make out were as follows:

Religious
and minorities are allowed to do whatever they want according to some Article
30. Take their own exams, choose their own students, according to their
principles.. And when the question was asked, "To what
extent can professional
education be treated as a matter
coming under minorities rights under Article 30", respected Mr.
Salve replied, "… a
minority institution may have its own procedure and method of
admission as well
as selection of students, but such a
procedure would have to be fair
and transparent and the selection
of students in
professional and higher educational colleges should be
on the basis
of merit. The
procedure selected for admission by the minority institution ought not
to ignore the merit of
students for admission
while exercising the
right to admit students by the colleges aforesaid, as
in that event, the institution will fail to achieve excellence. The said
procedure should not
amount to
maladministration." [point 25]

I found
that line quite interesting (the one that I have highlighted in bold). It
seemed to me that these judges and lawyers were immune to what was happening
outside the Supreme Court..

One more
thing I noticed, although it might not be relevant to this, that most of the
articles were cited from the constitution were amended or made aeons ago.. 1956,
1964, 1976.. I saw one 1998-2000, but that was about the introduction of NEET,
and well, it is dead now.. Somehow makes me feel archaic.

Another
point that caught my eye was Mr. Parasaran's statement saying, "the
hard reality that emerges is that private educational institutions are
a necessity in the present-day circumstances. It is not possible today without them because
the Governments are
in no position to meet the demand,
particularly in the sectors
of medical and technical education, which call for
substantial investments and
expenses. Mr. Parasaran submitted
that the
impugned Regulations were
not in the national interest and would only
discourage good private
institutions being established by people dedicated to the
cause of providing health
care to all sections of the citizens
of this country
and, in particular,
the marginalized sections in the metropolitan and rural areas."[point
56]

Again, I
highlighted the points that interested me. Think of it, and you know how
pathetic it is. It's inevitable that private companies work on profit, and high
fees. Since Government has failed to fund the most important part of a country,
it's health system.. I have watched respected Dr. Gulati express his concerns
on the issue of privatization of healthcare as a primary cause of all the
corruption ever since his appearance on Satyamev Jayate, a show that was hosted
by Mr. Aamir Khan. But, I don't see anybody paying much heed to that..

Relevant
to this I would also like to quote an article titled "Amartya Sen: India's dirty fighter".
In it was written the following lines, "..
[Sen and Drèze] argue that India's overriding preoccupation with economic
growth makes no sense without recognising that human development depends on how that wealth is used
and distributed. What's the purpose of a
development model that produces luxury shopping malls rather than sanitation
systems that ensure millions of healthy lives, ask Drèze and Sen, accusing
India of "unaimed opulence". India is caught in the absurd paradox of
people having mobile phones but no toilets."

I tried
to look for the Financial aspect of the Healthcare and I was amazed to find the
data (which I have put in my post "Health in India".
And I am sure that anybody would be shocked to look at the data. Just 1% of GDP
invested by Government on health..

And then
again, I was also wondering if Mr. Parasaran was talking about theseprivate medical colleges, when he talked about discouraging "good private institutions"..

Inflation
and corruption are inherent to a Monetary Based Economy, thus the whole fight
seems pointless when seen from that vantage point. To most of us NEET had a
promise of something good, but it now has been destroyed under the religious
and minority humbug. But that's fine by me. I mean, even they have their
freedom, according to Article 30, or whatever. And using that as a cover, the
corrupt private colleges will continue to do all the "business" they
have been doing for so long.. And that would of course mean less of students
getting selected by merit.. And one may ask, "how is that fair??!!"
And the eloquent answer would be, "who said life would be fair!"

And
there's this another argument that MCI is not the proper body to be conducting
the exam, because the only things that an MCI can do…..well, are things that it
doesn't do properly anyway, so of course carrying out one unified exam would
be asking too much of it. MCI has had a past, with all those private
colleges scams, director arrested, etc... So now when MCI wants to do something
good, they are not being allowed to. So who is going to conduct the exam? That
question stays unanswered..

I agree
to one thing though. One cannot remove a faulty system and install another
faulty system instead.. NEET may have been a good concept, but the pattern of
the exam and the selection process was not proper.. Although people may argue
that even CAT and USMLE exams are taken in such a way, but it must be noted
that USMLE has 3 steps and CAT has the interviews.. Even these guys don't
solely depend on just the exam. So, NEET is just a half copied, incomplete
pattern, for a proper merit based exam, per se..

And
there's another set of arguments that exams on different days may cause a
different in markings and thus inappropriate rankings.. Tougher questions on a
day may lead to a worse rank and easier on others may lead to better ranks..
This, I think, is a myth. Even USMLE, CAT, Manipal, and many others follow this
pattern of online exam.. The Scaling is a bit complicated than one might
usually think. Of course, considering the weakness in Mathematics (for most who
had opted for bio), statistics could be bothering.. But a look at how CAT does the scoring,
perhaps, may give one an idea at the complexity. I remember some even went out
to do a survey with the DNB results to find out a co-relation, and never came
out with any positive result.. Even I have been a bit sceptic about this
method, but Mathematics, I know, is a strong tool, and can prevent any bias by
proper use of statistics.. As they say, you are always afraid of what is
unknown or incomprehensible to you. I have my faith with mathematics, and I
happily let go off the paranoia now. But, like said before, the exam alone
shouldn't be the deciding factor.

Another
argument is what if we miss the day of the exam, there's no other exam if that
exam is missed due to unavoidable circumstances.. Well, I guess the answer to
that would be a provision to take the exam on another day, provided valid
reasons are put, etc.. But then again these are methods of correcting the NEET
system.. These arguments, which SHOULD have been a part of the case, were not.
Because the case was about religious and minorities fighting for their freedom
and saying how India secularism, unlike American secularism is a "bowl of salad and not a melting pot".

Of course
there's a set of questions I'd like to ask..

Court in
2010 had announced that NEET will take place around 2011. But then AIIMS said
they won't be able to conduct the test, it was postponed to 2012. Where were
these private and minority institutes then? Why hadn't they put their case then
and there? Why wait till the completion of the exam in Nov 2012!!?? And if they
had made the case in early 2012, why had the case been transferred and delayed
till December 2012? What were they waiting for? Why harass the students? What
was the actual motive behind all this hullabaloo? Economic growth, was it? Empty Swiss accounts
probably?

As a
medical student, all I want is a fair
exam and admission to an institution, private or government, for my higher
education. And most would agree with me here. Even if the old system prevails
of AIPGMEE and state exams, and each of them had a transparent process of
examination and admission, no one would have any problem whatsoever. Its this
deficiency of a transparent system at the state and private exam level that has
caused this uproar from our side at least, that's what I believe. It's true
that India faces a shortage of doctors, but how does one solve that issue? Such
cases and harassment just make medical students like us wish we just get out of
this country, furthermore adding to the deficit. And the quality of medical
education just goes down day by day, making us inefficient doctors..

All this minority rights is a facade to escape being subjected to any regulation. Can these minority medical institutes exist n attract students if they do not have MCI affiliation for MBBS? Any world medical body will give them affiliation without them following their rules? If they want so much autonomy let all religious institutes have their own MBBS certified only by them. They want best of both worlds- no accountability to anyone and full prices from students without role of market forces.